random snippets and great new blogs

bunch of little things that I really ought to say more about,
but I'll be doing some paperwork instead

Cosmic Horizons - new astro blog from down under by one of the very best kick ass distinguished senior astrophysicists on the planet - and it is a good read

Did the Earth seed the Solar System with life, or vica versa - progress on quantifying panspermia conjectures within the Solar System

The HARPS search for Earth-like planets in the habitable zone: I -- Very low-mass planets around HD20794, HD85512 and HD192310

Planetary Construction Zones in Occultation: Eclipses by Circumsecondary and Circumplanetary Disks and a Candidate Eclipse of a Pre-Main Sequence Star in Sco-Cen

Plan B From Outer Space - hey that could make a really good blog post title...
So the current plan is to have NASA Exploration "volunteer" funds for Science to get JWST back on track.
Ok. Sure.

MIT comes up with genuine anti-viral drug - this looks really promising, and I should probably check what my co-bloggers have had to say about it (or they could volunteer the information in the comments).
Obvious question: does it also tackle retroviruses? Don't know enough about the RNA back and forth to figure it out meself.

PopSci's 25 Most Awesome College Labs 2011 - #23 SLAC
"Career: Condensed-matter physicist
Learn to: Capture 3-D images of molecules using powerful x-rays

Every summer, undergrads join Nobel Prize-winning scientists here to send electrons down the longest linear accelerator in the world at close to 670 million mph, producing superpowerful x-rays. These x-ray beams are used to create 3-D images of individual molecules."

Ouch.